Saturday, December 08, 2007

The father of a Chinese man who died of bird flu has also been infected with the virus, raising fear of human-to-human transmission.

The World Health Organization said it could not rule out the possibility that the H5N1 virus had spread from the son to the father.

For the most part, humans have caught the virus from sick birds.

Scientists fear if the virus gains the ability to pass easily between humans, tens of millions of people could die.

A statement on the Chinese ministry's website said a 52-year-old man in eastern Jiangsu province identified only by his surname, Lu, has been confirmed with the virus, just days after his 24-year-old son succumbed to it on 2 December.

Members of the same family have died before, but it's been difficult to tell whether it was human-to-human contagion or contact with affected birds, since the family members have all had interactions with their bird stock.

In this case, however, there is no clear non-human link to the virus, ratcheting up the probability of mammalian adaption by the virus. If so, we're talking about the possibility of an outbreak at least as severe as the Hong Kong Flu of 1968, and perhaps as virulent as the Spanish Flu of 1918.

In both cases, it took from seven to ten years between the first recognized avian outbreak until the virus became activated in mammals. In the case of the Hong Kong flu, it skipped the intermediate mammalian outbreak to attack humans directly, so we might not get a warning when the avian flu epidemizes.

Ironically, the Hong Kong flu hit American shores from returning troops ending their tours of duty in Viet Nam, and here we are, debating ending yet another war in Asia and bringing troops home. Osama might be rubbing his hands in glee.

The death rates for the Hong Kong flu were low. Of 50 million reported cases in the US, for example, 33 thousand people died. The death rates for the Spanish flu were tragically high: 50-100 million estimated dead, with about twice that number reporting the disease (or symptoms just like it...hospital records are incomplete).

Right now, the avian flu mortality rate is skewing towards the high end of this scale. For example, in China, 26 cases have been reported, with 17 fatalities. A total of 200 people worldwide have died of the avian flu.

Mitt Romney, December 6, 2007 - "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

Errrrrrrrrrrrrr, not so much.

Apparently, Mitt hadn't farmed out a study of history to his staff to discuss in committee and prepare an executive summary of religion throughout history.

Indeed, a cursory glance at history shows that religion thrives where freedom is denied. This is part of the reason that Marx called religion the opiate of the people.

Even today, no one would deny that Islam is a religion, and that fundamental Islamists are against freedom. Yet, there's religion, being used to both terrorize nations, as well as pacify them.

I'm fairly sure that's not what Romney meant, yet his words echo hollow in the corridor of current events.

Too, Christianity has its fair share of tyrannical popes and autocratic kings, both of whom used the cudgel of the Bible to keep their people in line, while cynically holding out the carrot of "life everlasting."

And if religion requires freedom, Mr. Romney, just why was a part of America formed by the Puritans? They were escaping...ready?...religious dogma in England!

Your own religion is rife with examples of organized religion shunning your ancestors. Look at how the Mormons were driven from New York State into Ohio into godforsaken Utah, where in the middle of one of the most desolate places on the planet, Joseph Smith decided he'd found paradise.

It was paradise, sir, merely because no one was around to harass and oppress your forebears and their...I'll be kind...quirky thoughts on God and who precisely was He? I mean, come on...the Angel Moroni? There's a clue there, sir, if you take off the "i"...

Freedom is not religion, and religion is not freedom, and neither requires the other to exist. Even the ancient Greeks, the first truly democratic society on the planet, used religion not for freedom but to keep the citizenry (and more, the slaves) in line.

Freedom and religion, in fact, might be viewed as antithetical, antagonistic, even, and there's the rub and the idiocy of your comments yesterday. Rather than reassure the nation that you are, indeed, a mainstream conservative from a mainstream religion (and not a cult of blind fools), all you have succeeded in doing is handing the primary season to Mike Huckabee or Rudy Giuliani, by exposing a troubling neglect and ignorance of your own background, nevermind world events.

In short, Mr. Romney, you've gone from competent CEO to out-of-touch chairman of the bored.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

When history looks at the Bush administration from the perspective of the American people, it's overwhelming conclusion will be "who did the policy really benefit, since it clearly didn't benefit the citizenry?"

The plan hammered out by the U.S. Treasury Department in talks with mortgage industry leaders would bring relief to many of the 2 million homeowners who took out adjustable rate loans with low teaser rates due to move sharply higher in the next year or so.

Officials fear 500,000 Americans are at risk of losing their homes.

The initiative is designed to temporarily hold rates steady for subprime borrowers who could not afford to stay in their homes otherwise. A senior White House official said Bush would discuss the agreement at 1:40 p.m. (1840 GMT) on Thursday.

"No one wins when a house is foreclosed on -- the homeowner loses; the lenders lose; communities and neighborhoods lose; investors lose; and the economy suffers," the official said.

Clinton said mortgage lenders and brokers who lowered underwriting standards were also deserving of blame for the housing market mess, as were regulators who failed to provide adequate oversight.

She pinned some of the responsibility on ratings agencies for giving high marks to securities later deemed to be much riskier, and on speculators who bought multiple properties in the hope of profiting from a strong housing market.

She also pointed out that a mortgage was no longer a mortgage, but an "asset" underpinning a securities (a derivative), which could be bought and sold like a commodity.

This action spreads the risk of the loss (see the article I originally quoted) amongst the business community, in particular, away from the banks who lent the money in the first place!

So the lender doesn't lose, meaning there's got to be a better reason why banks and mortgage makers would agree to a rate freeze.

The White House is touting that the agreement will help over a million homeowners who face enormous rate increases in the next twelve months (roughly two million), and many of the 500,000 homeowners already in default on their mortgages:

The official said the plan could help more than a million qualified homeowners with subprime loans avoid foreclosure over the next couple of years. However, private-sector analysts said the numbers would likely be much lower.

"In theory, the plan could help as many as 750,000 subprime homeowners," said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com. "In practice, my sense is that it will probably help at best about 250,000 homeowners."

And so how does this plan work?

Under the plan laid out by the investor group, homeowners who have shown they are a reasonable credit risk, but who could not afford their homes with higher rates, would qualify for "fast-track" loan modification and the five-year interest rate freeze.

Borrowers who can afford their current loan terms would get help refinancing, but those who cannot and were poor credit risks would probably still lose their homes.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, there's the "benefit" to banks! The bill does nothing to wipe out the really bad lending decisions that were made by the banks, meaning they can write them off, taking a one-time hit to earnings, once the freeze is in place. This frees up future earnings (and by extension, their stock prices) and bolsters their balance sheets long-term by wiping out the calculations needed to determine the bad debt expenses associated with the truly exploitative loans.

In effect, what this reform is saying is, if you could have afforded your mortgage five years ago under these new terms, then you can keep your house. If not, tough luck, sucker! We take your house AND all the equity you've built up in it, and will sell it off to make our mortgage back.

Yea. Bush "reform"...

By the way, lest you think this is a "red state" phenomenon....well...

1) AARP doesn't kid around. My membership card was waiting in the mailbox when I returned!

2) On that note....

I QUALIFY FOR AARP?????????????? AUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

3) I don't think I will ever fly anything less than First Class again. Given what a stingy bastard I am, that means I won't be taking anymore vacations. Ever! *grins*

4) The weather was kind of dodgy, and I didn't get to do any diving (sure, it cleared up the frikkin' day I was leaving!), but I got away and relaxed and cleared my head a little.

5) I'm fifteen years away from "retirement", which in Bush's America means I'm fifteen years away from starting my second career as a server at Mickie D's.

6) I'm half a century old. There are trees older than I am, but not that many.

7) While there are few nicer things than to land at your home airport, there are few worse things than waiting for your luggage at the "new" Delta terminal, where the baggage claim is the next building over.

8) Oh...for you plane enthusiasts out there, the Boeing 777 is fantastic!

Here's a site I heard about last night. Probably more for people who don't pay too much attention to politics, but we all know those people, don't we?!Anyhoo, you pick your issues, see actual statements by candidates, and then see which candidate is playing your tune.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Monday, December 03, 2007

I know John McCain received the endorsement of the Manchester Union & Guardian...and that Rudy is still sweating over the revelations regarding his rip-off of the New York City taxpayers..and that Hillary is still a "lesbian"...what stories do I need to know about for my return?

From her work on public campaign financing of elections, to her book "Walking Across America in My Ninetieth Year", to her recent documentary that premieredon HBO "Run Granny Run", Doris "Granny D" Haddock embodies precisely whatit means to be a patriot and a wise elder. Her life is well worth reading up on, andher speeches are priceless. This is one that she recently gave at Wartburg Collegein Iowa, and while not as humorous as others she's given, I hope you find it worthwhile. Hey, you're used to longwinded on this blog ANyhoosle, right?! (ed note: yea right, I'm not longwinded, I'm verbose...link to transcript here)--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Thank you.

It's wonderful to be here today at Wartburg, which I have long admired as one ofAmerica's great liberal arts colleges.

I would like to underline that word "liberal" in the context of liberal arts.It does not, of course, refer to big government, or to left-of-center politics.No, as I'm sure you know, it refers to the art of thinking freely-training themind to think for itself, free of the lies and fantasies and prejudices thatwrap around us from an early age.

In this time, the very idea of human life on the planet is at stake. War andviolence have taken new and decidedly more dangerous turns.

So you are doing well to be freeing your minds right now. That is a difficulttask, as there are so many forces around you, telling you what and how to think,and selling you incredible lies.

The War on Terrorism is a good example. It is a term used to keep you fromthinking freely and from actually solving the world's problems relating topoverty and freedom. If you solved those problems you would severely damage theprofits of the elite.

The very idea that you can have war on terror is as silly as the idea that youcan have war on anger. War itself is insane anger.

As the world's resources become stressed by global warming and overpopulation,do we really think we can kill all the angry people? Can we calm them down bydropping bombs on their villages and spraying their families with machine gunbullets? Isn't that rather like dropping gasoline and crumpled newspaper onforest fires instead of water? Do you think anyone really thinks it will work?They don't even want it to work. War is too profitable. It is profitable forthose who finance the careers of our politicians.

Islamo-fascism, as a label, is yet another fraud used to keep you from thinkingfreely. Some people in the world are so desperate and angry that they will blowthemselves up just to hurt us, that is true. But it has to do with theconditions of their lives, not with religion. Religion is always the excuse formurder, but rarely the motive. If I tell you that God wants us all to clean upthe dining rooms tonight, to scrub every seat and scrape-off every blob of gum,you will thank me for my opinion and you will back out of the room en masse.If, however, I tell you that God wants us all to storm the administrationbuilding tonight and change our grades to straight A's, then how many of youwill answer God's call? In war, religion is a cover and an organizingconvenience. That's all it has ever been, going back to the Crusades, which wereall about treasure and rape.

The "War on Terrorism" has very little to do with anyone's religious beliefs.Terrorism, historically, is a term used to describe what governments do to rulethrough fear-to overrule the rule of law. The term originated after the FrenchRevolution as a tool for suppressing dissent. If we are to truly prosecute aWar on Terrorism, it would inclue preventing governments from using fear toshred the democratic rule of law.

If you want to stop insane anger in the world, you have to get at world povertyand the injustices that people suffer as nations ruthlessly jockey forresources.

"We don't negotiate with terrorists." Anytime you hear tough language likethat, you will do well to assume it means the opposite. If we actually don'tnegotiate with terrorists, you would have heard the President make a speechproclaiming that: "Nothing our enemies do will persuade us in the least to giveup on our principles. We will hold fast to our Bill of Rights and to thecherished Geneva Convention. All suspects will be afforded a lawyer and a trialand humane treatment, no matter what. We will not run like cowards away from theConstitution and the human values that our people have fought and died toprotect and improve. We will not give any of that up to the terrorists inexchange for some hope of extra safety. We will not negotiate."

THAT would be refusing to negotiate with terrorists. But that is not what thisgovernment has done. In terms of giving up on things of value, this governmenthas knelt down and emptied its pockets after the first punch. It was profitablefor some people for this to happen.

Not only has our so-called government given away our basic human rights-turnedthem over to the terrorists in exchange for worthless hopes of safety-but theyhave subjected you and me to endless little indignities unbecoming Americancitizens.

Why do they harass you at the airports, refusing to let you stop your car for amoment at the curb to pick-up your friends? Do they think that, by harassingyou in this way, that they are in any way preventing a truck from driving up andexploding? They of course know better. It is not about that. it is about keepingyou fearful, and reminding us that We the People no longer have the power. Speakup at the airport and you will be whisked away. What a wonderful place anairport is to teach us all about the new country we are living in.

So you take off your shoes because one madman had an exploding shoe some yearsago. I'm not sure which is worse: one possible tragedy like that, or the smellof a hundred million feet thereafter. The point of this airport ceremony is tophysically humiliate you into subservience to the new state. Get used to it,because it is just getting started--if you will let it.

Any politician you hear talking seriously about the War on Terror or aboutIslamo-Fascism is lying to you and trying to prevent you from thinking freely.Call them on it. Tell them you think those terms are really just a lot of BSmeant to deflect attention from the real issues of world poverty, theunsustainable exploitation of resources and other issues that we, in fact, couldaddress seriously with a fraction of what we spend on counterproductivewarfare-though we understand it is highly profitable for some.

If you are a psych major or have taken some psych courses, you understand thatwe often transfer to others the things we fear most within ourselves. When someleaders label others with words like terrorist, let them look first to what theyare themselves doing in the world. Are they upholding the human rights encodedin the U.S. Constitution, and in the Geneva Convention, and in the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights? If they are not, then they have forfeited theirright to label other people in any disparaging way. Do they understand that 90%of the people who die in war are civilians, and that any pre-emptive, meaningnon-provoked war, is by definition an act of terrorism?

In the term "Islamo-fascist, let's look a little closer. The term "fascist" waspopularized by Mussolini to describe how corporate interests could be combinedwith an authoritarian government. If some American leader has assumeddictatorial powers by claiming the ability to disregard laws, and if he hasgiven no-bid contracts with billions of dollars to friendly corporations that hehas an actual family interest in, then he may indeed want to transfer the wordFascist as far away from himself as possible, but we see through this with ourfree minds. The historical shoe fits.

The fact of our condition is that we have two governments. We have a facelessgovernment that has secret prisons, its own rules, a suspension of all ourrights, and its own armies and budgets. It laughs at us when we think we cantell it what to do. It has been around for some time -certainly since the early60s when we started losing the leaders who actually represented our values.

We do have another government. It is the one where we have debates, campaigns,elections (more or less), and where the winners play at a Congress. Thisgovernment has fallen in power as the other has risen. I have lived long enoughto see the dimming of lights in the Capitol building. These people no longermuch represent you and me. The mainstream news keeps us from seeing the truthof this. We are expected to be happy with our wonderful cars and your wonderfulmusic players and our fancy phones that can message back and forth. But we havebeen left without anything of our own to say that is not a rewrite of acommercial.

If you are not hearing the truth from the mainstream media, it is because thereis a game here, and one of the main rules of the game is that you have topretend we are still a government of, by and for its people. If you cannot livein that fantasy, you will be ostracized as a nut case, a fanatic, a fringeelement. That is part of the control mechanism that you have to understand ifyou would be free to think for yourself.

If, to create an absurd example, the family of George Bush were investorstogether in oil partnerships with the Bin Laden family, or if George Bush Seniorwere a part of a company like the Carlyle Group that has profited greatly fromthe Iraq War, would those stories be all over CNN and in the front pages ofnewspapers, or would those stories violate the fantasy and therefore be ignored?Well, those stories happen to be true, so judge for yourself if we have aproblem with the news media.

How, indeed, do we bring order into the chaos of our lives once we reject thelies around us? What is the thing that is not a lie? Where is a fixed star bywhich we can navigate our lives through the ever-warming waters ahead?Somewhere, perhaps less than a mile from here, there is someone who didn't cometo this lecture. This person took time out of his or her day to go tutor a kidor help an older person-maybe to help someone learn a needed language. There isthe star. That person out there has more to tell you than I do, for Love is theonly truth that can save us from lies and from anger and sad living. The realdivision of politics in the world is between truth and love on one hand, whichcall for the happy development of every human's highest potential, and thepolitics of fear and hate on the other hand, which are known by exploitation andoppression.

You know which kind of politics is at the helm today. Maybe an election or twocan make some improvements. But, even so, we still have this little problemwith the other government, the one that thinks it is really in charge of ourlives and our world--the one the world knows very well. When the stormdestroyed New Orleans, the wealthy neighborhoods suddenly had armed Blackwaterguards at their gates. These machine-gun toting men were from other nations andhad no familiarity with our Bill of Rights. They would have followed any order.In that storm, we saw the future, if we will allow it.

Race is more important in organizing political differences than economic class.So now we see a rise in racial conflict in America, even in places where wewouldn't have imagined it a few years ago. The uneasy peace between the races inAmerica made possible by the post World War II boom is now moving into difficulttimes. It is aggravated by the immigration issue. Can you see these issuesfreely? You read the newspapers and the internet news sites, and you watch theDaily Show, so you know just about everything. Or do you? The U.S. Farmprogram, voted for by our elected representatives, subsidizes the corn industryso heavily that American corporations sell corn in Mexico for half of whatMexico's family farmers can sell it for. So half the farms in Mexico have goneout of business. Farm families have migrated to Mexico's big cities, wherethere is so much poverty that all one can do is plan to sneak into America fordecent wages. They die on our desert borders. If it were easy to come and go,how could we oppress them so easily? We have come to rely upon this oppressionfor the smooth operation of our communities. But you will not hear about thisstory on the TV news, will you? It is outside the accepted fantasy.

The lies that surround us drive emotions and they drive unkindness and cruelty,which are the signposts of misinformation and misunderstanding. People who arenot free of mind are not kindly of mind. Kindness is freedom's truestindicator. If you cannot stop to help someone who clearly needs your help, youare not a free man or woman. Your chains may have the glamorous attachments ofBlackberries and credit cards, but you are not free if your time is not your ownto follow your heart.

If you are looking for a strategy to improve relations between the races,between straight and gay people, between religions, you must understand thatsuch peace is most achievable when there is sufficient truth and prosperity togo around, and when there is the kindness that is the product of those two.

To preserve prosperity in the world, agriculture and nature must be saved. Thecoal plants must be shut down--all of them--within the next few years.Gasoline-powered automobiles must be phased-out in the next ten years.International trade must be largely curtailed in favor of local production.These are the issues of a politics of love, and they cannot go forward withoutsome free thinking and some knocking-down of immense lies now in place.

Free thinking, prosperity and kindness, so intertwined, make cooperative livingeasier to achieve, and push intolerance away. We have a lot of work to do, but,can you see it? Do you have a glimpse of it?

Can you stand the idea of Google-ing a little more Noam Chomsky and a littleless USA Today? That would be a good beginning.

Churchill was correct when he said the empires of the future are the empires ofthe mind. The big battle for the future is being fought right now in your mind.Your freedoms are closing-in around you.

Our present circumstances seem to necessitate a new and democratic internationalcompact between those of you who are willing to do what is necessary to be freepeople living sustainably, and to withdraw our support from systems outside thecompact. The compact can be first between individuals, and then communities. Itcan later include regions and nations. How will this be brought forth? Will itbe enough? I don't know, but it's all we can do. Certainly the Internet, foras long as we can keep it, can get us started. But don't rely on it entirely,for it is no longer ours to trust.

You have the power to save your freedoms and your natural world. Truth andLove, Courage and Energy, and a good organizing plan for cooperative action areyour great powers. Don't look for leaders to do it for you, unless you arestanding before a mirror.

I'm 97, soon 98, so saying "good luck" is about all I have left. I have filledmy life with adventures and good causes. They have not been enough for theworld, and they have not even been enough for me. But I shudder to think of howbare my life would have been had I not answered the call to action that you mustnow be feeling somewhere in your hearts, as you have it felt before.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Producer Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) and director Ron Van Alkemadehave made a serious docu-comedy about the commercialization of Christmas.The movie follows Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choiras they go on a cross country mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalyse:the end of mankind from consumerism, over-consumption, and the fires of eternal debt!You can watch or listen to Reverend Billy and Morgan Spurlock with Amy Goodman (plus see an excerpt from the movie) here.A chronicalling of Reverend Billy's arrest in Union Square in July for reciting theFirst Amendment, plus a few of his other arrests earlier in the year, here.Bless his heart. Love! Him!Official site for the movie is www.wwjbmovie.com

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." -- Matt Santos, The West Wing